Browsed by
Category: Health

Doctors have become the tools of their tools

Doctors have become the tools of their tools

Atul Gawande writes: A 2016 study found that physicians spent about two hours doing computer work for every hour spent face to face with a patient—whatever the brand of medical software. In the examination room, physicians devoted half of their patient time facing the screen to do electronic tasks. And these tasks were spilling over after hours. The University of Wisconsin found that the average workday for its family physicians had grown to eleven and a half hours. The result…

Read More Read More

Most American soldiers are overweight and underslept

Most American soldiers are overweight and underslept

Military Times reports: A 2018 RAND report on health promotion and disease prevention has painted a grim picture of the military’s physical fitness and sleep standards. The study, featuring roughly 18,000 randomly selected participants across each of the service branches, showed that almost 66 percent of service members are considered to be either overweight or obese, based on the military’s use of body mass index as a measuring standard. While the number of overweight service members is a cause for…

Read More Read More

Trump administration tries to boost corporate profits by exposing Americans to radiation and toxins

Trump administration tries to boost corporate profits by exposing Americans to radiation and toxins

The Associated Press reports: The Trump administration is quietly moving to weaken U.S. radiation regulations, turning to scientific outliers who argue that a bit of radiation damage is actually good for you — like a little bit of sunlight. The government’s current, decades-old guidance says that any exposure to harmful radiation is a cancer risk. And critics say the proposed change could lead to higher levels of exposure for workers at nuclear installations and oil and gas drilling sites, medical…

Read More Read More

Time-restricted eating can overcome the bad effects of faulty genes and unhealthy diet

Time-restricted eating can overcome the bad effects of faulty genes and unhealthy diet

sukrit3d/Shutterstock.com By Satchin Panda, University of California San Diego Timing our meals can fend off diseases caused by bad genes or bad diet. Everything in our body is programmed to run on a 24-hour or circadian time table that repeats every day. Nearly a dozen different genes work together to produce this 24-hour circadian cycle. These clocks are present in all of our organs, tissues and even in every cell. These internal clocks tell us when to sleep, eat, be…

Read More Read More

As wildfires rage, smoke chokes out farmworkers and delays some crops

As wildfires rage, smoke chokes out farmworkers and delays some crops

NPR reports: On Mike Pink’s potato farm at dawn, the sun is an angry red ball low in the sky. This summer, wildfire smoke has blanketed much of the West for days and weeks. And that smoke has come between the sun and ripening crops. Pink watches as his year’s work tumbles onto a fast-moving belt and into a waiting semi truck. He’s got most of his 1,600-acre potato fields yet to harvest on his 3,000-acre farm, spread over about…

Read More Read More

Climate change will make hundreds of millions more people suffer from nutritional deficiencies

Climate change will make hundreds of millions more people suffer from nutritional deficiencies

The Guardian reports: Rising levels of carbon dioxide could make crops less nutritious and damage the health of hundreds of millions of people, research has revealed, with those living in some of the world’s poorest regions likely to be hardest hit. Previous research has shown that many food crops become less nutritious when grown under the CO2 levels expected by 2050, with reductions of protein, iron and zinc estimated at 3–17%. Now experts say such changes could mean that by…

Read More Read More

Air pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence, study reveals

Air pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence, study reveals

The Guardian reports: Air pollution causes a “huge” reduction in intelligence, according to new research, indicating that the damage to society of toxic air is far deeper than the well-known impacts on physical health. The research was conducted in China but is relevant across the world, with 95% of the global population breathing unsafe air. It found that high pollution levels led to significant drops in test scores in language and arithmetic, with the average impact equivalent to having lost…

Read More Read More

Wildfires causing air quality to worsen across much of the western United States

Wildfires causing air quality to worsen across much of the western United States

Vox reports: Ash and smoke are choking Seattle’s air for the second week in a row, as wildfires smolder in the Cascades and in British Columbia. The air quality in Seattle this week has been worse than in Beijing, one of the world’s most notoriously polluted cities. As of Wednesday morning, the Air Quality Index in Seattle was at 190, a rating classified as “unhealthy.” In parts of the city, the index rose as high as 220, which is “very…

Read More Read More

Why prolonged sitting may be bad for your brain

Why prolonged sitting may be bad for your brain

The New York Times reports: Sitting for hours without moving can slow the flow of blood to our brains, according to a cautionary new study of office workers, a finding that could have implications for long-term brain health. But getting up and strolling for just two minutes every half-hour seems to stave off this decline in brain blood flow and may even increase it. Delivering blood to our brains is one of those automatic internal processes that most of us…

Read More Read More

More than 2 billion people lack safe drinking water. That number will only grow

More than 2 billion people lack safe drinking water. That number will only grow

Science News reports: Freshwater is crucial for drinking, washing, growing food, producing energy and just about every other aspect of modern life. Yet more than 2 billion of Earth’s 7.6 billion inhabitants lack clean drinking water at home, available on demand. A major United Nations report, released in June, shows that the world is not on track to meet a U.N. goal: to bring safe water and sanitation to everyone by 2030. And by 2050, half the world’s population may…

Read More Read More

Bayer stock plunges after jury awards man $289 million in Roundup cancer trial

Bayer stock plunges after jury awards man $289 million in Roundup cancer trial

The Washington Post reports: Bayer’s stock slumped more than 10 percent in trading Monday, three days after a California jury awarded $289 million to a former groundskeeper who said the popular weedkiller Roundup gave him terminal cancer. The stock drop sent a cautionary signal to the company that acquired Monsanto, the maker of the weedkiller, in June for $63 billion. The merger created the world’s largest seed and agrochemical company, marrying Monsanto’s dominance in genetically modified crops with Bayer’s pesticide…

Read More Read More

Court orders Trump EPA to ban harmful pesticide

Court orders Trump EPA to ban harmful pesticide

The Hill reports: A federal appeals court has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which former Administrator Scott Pruitt refused to do last year. The decision is a major win for environmentalists and health advocates. The EPA’s own research, as recently as 2016, linked chlorpyrifos to developmental and neurological disorders, especially in children and infants. The Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, the federal law governing…

Read More Read More

Pharma’s investment in boosting profits more than health

Pharma’s investment in boosting profits more than health

Clayton Dalton writes: Just a few years ago, infection with the hepatitis C virus guaranteed a slow and certain death for many. Available treatments were effective in about half of all patients, and the side effects could be awful. Things changed in 2014, when a new medication called Harvoni was approved to treat the infection. With cure rates approaching 99 per cent and far fewer side effects, the medication became an instant blockbuster. Sales topped $13.8 billion in 2015. But…

Read More Read More

The marvel of LED lighting is now a global blight to health

The marvel of LED lighting is now a global blight to health

By Richard G ‘Bugs’ Stevens, Aeon Light pollution is often characterised as a soft issue in environmentalism. This perception needs to change. Light at night constitutes a massive assault on the ecology of the planet, including us. It also has indirect impacts because, while 20 per cent of electricity is used for lighting worldwide, at least 30 per cent of that light is wasted. Wasted light serves no purpose at all, and excessive lighting is too often used beyond what…

Read More Read More

Pregnant women say they miscarried in immigration detention and didn’t get the care they needed

Pregnant women say they miscarried in immigration detention and didn’t get the care they needed

BuzzFeed reports: Two weeks after arriving in the US seeking asylum, E, 23, found herself in a detention cell in San Luis, Arizona, bleeding profusely and begging for help from staff at the facility. She was four months pregnant and felt like she was losing her baby. She had come to the US from El Salvador after finding out she was pregnant, in the hopes of raising her son in a safer home. “An official arrived and they said it…

Read More Read More

A massive study solidifies the link between air pollution from cars and diabetes

A massive study solidifies the link between air pollution from cars and diabetes

Olga Khazan reports: It’s fairly well known that a bad diet, a lack of exercise, and genetics can all contribute to type 2 diabetes. But a new global study points to an additional, surprising culprit: the air pollution emitted by cars and trucks. Though other research has shown a link between diabetes and air pollution in the past, this study is one of the largest of its kind, and it’s unique because it both is longitudinal and includes several types…

Read More Read More